Like This, for Ever (29 page)

On his own floor, Barney wanted nothing more than to go straight to bed. Somehow, though, he just couldn’t resist opening up Facebook one last time. Just to see if there was any news on Oliver. Unable to stop himself, he read through the various postings Peter and others had left throughout the evening.

Jeez, that wasn’t his dad. He just knew it. No way would his dad be that sick.

Without even bothering to log out, he was about to turn away when he spotted a message waiting for him. Messages on Facebook were private. Only the sender and the recipient could see them. He clicked open Messages. It was from Peter Sweep.

My new obsession is you. How was the pizza?

‘Let me get this straight. You offered to use Metropolitan Police resources to help a disturbed eleven-year-old boy conduct a missing-persons search?’

Lacey glared over the top of her mug. It was the first time she’d ever willingly invited Joesbury into her flat and she’d expected to be jumpy as hell. Instead, she was finding his presence strangely soothing. The knots that had been clenched up inside her for most of the day were loosening. But Christ, why was her flat so unwelcoming? Why did she insist upon plain white, picture-free walls, spartan furniture, a complete absence of ornaments or personal possessions? She didn’t like clutter, but would a few cushions hurt? And those light fittings had probably been trendy in 1965.

‘Give me some credit,’ she said. ‘I promised him nothing. He told me his mother’s name and I said I’d give it some thought.’

‘OK.’ He nodded at her to go on.

‘I did then remote-access the system, so if you want to report me to Tulloch, I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’

One eyebrow flickered. ‘Save your breath, Flint, I’m not getting involved in your catfight.’

‘She started it.’

The eyebrow went up. Five wrinkles appeared between it and his hairline.

‘First thing I did was to run her through the box. Nothing.’

Joesbury nodded. The box was slang for the Police National Computer. ‘So we know she’s not banged up somewhere,’ he said.

‘Then I thought I’d better make sure she’s still alive,’ Lacey said. ‘Because I’d feel a proper prat if I spent hours trying to track her down, only to find out she’d gone under a bus five years ago.’

‘And did she?’

‘Go under a bus? I wish.’ Lacey got up, pressed the space bar on her computer to activate the screen and looked back at Joesbury. He crossed to join her. He hadn’t been home all day. There was no trace in the air of the lightly spiced cologne he wore after a shower. He smelled of London, of fast food and traffic and smoke and beer.

Knowing exactly what she was doing, and how it would be interpreted, she stepped closer to him. Their shoulders brushed and stayed together.

‘Oh lord,’ said Joesbury, as he took in the information on the screen.

It was a coroner’s report, dated seven years earlier. The report itself ran to some ten pages and contained police statements, medical details, post-mortem reports. The summary was just two paragraphs long and told them that Karen Roberts, aged thirty-six, of Lambeth Road in Kennington, had taken her own life after several years of mental illness, including severe post-natal depression. She’d taken a whole load of diazepam, lain down in a warm bath and drawn a knife across her femoral artery. Her body had been discovered by her four-year-old son, Barnaby.

‘He doesn’t remember anything?’ said Joesbury.

‘Apparently not, although …’

‘What?’

‘What age do kids start remembering things?’

Joesbury made a
who knows?
gesture. ‘Round about three, I would have thought. Huck says his first memory is going to feed the ducks one Sunday morning and falling in because I was talking to one of the mums, who was blonde and pretty. He was two and a half at the
time. On the other hand, his mum’s told the story so often he probably just thinks he remembers it.’

‘I wonder if at some level he does remember it,’ said Lacey. ‘Barney, I’m talking about now. Remembers it, but just doesn’t want it to be true.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He’s a very switched-on kid. Very computer savvy, for one thing.’ She explained about his systematic search for his mother. ‘There was press coverage of Karen Roberts’s suicide. Not much, but reporters invariably attend coroners’ inquests and a kid finding his mother’s body would be a story they’d be bound to cover. I found the coverage with a quick Google search. I can’t believe he’s never done the same thing.’

‘You think he knows but he’s in denial?’

‘I think it’s quite possible. He also told me he has what he called episodes. Memory blackouts. I think he found out about his mum, wiped it from his head and now his brain is playing odd tricks on him. That would make him a pretty screwed-up kid, wouldn’t it? Acting out this elaborate charade of looking for his mum when all the time he knows she’s dead.’

Joesbury said nothing. He didn’t need to.

‘What on earth do I do?’ she asked him.

He shook his head. ‘This is a bloody minefield. You have to talk to his dad.’

She’d known he was going to say that. She could have worked that one out for herself. ‘I think he’s scared of his dad.’

‘Seriously scared, or just a bit wary of an emotionally distant parent?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know either of them well enough to judge.’

‘Lacey, you can’t give a vulnerable, disturbed kid potentially harmful information without speaking to his father first. Setting aside for a moment the damage you’d do to him, think about the implications for you if the father makes an official complaint.’

‘I know.’

‘If you think the kid’s being abused at home, then you have to make it official. Otherwise, I tend to think families are best placed to sort their own problems out. Talk to his dad, take it from there.’

He hadn’t told her anything she couldn’t have worked out for herself. So why, exactly, had she asked him round?

‘I will, thanks.’

Joesbury looked at his watch. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Well, if I’m not staying, I’m going.’

Ignore the stab of disappointment.
‘As obvious statements go, that had an elegant simplicity about it,’ she said.

‘Goodnight kiss out of the question?’

Don’t smile at him. Don’t even let your eyes soften. ‘I appreciate your coming round, Sir.’

Wrong, too flirtatious! He’d taken hold of her wrist, was pulling her … ouch!

‘What’s up?’ He’d seen the flicker of pain, was lifting her left wrist and loosening his fingers to reveal the plaster peeking out from beneath her sweater. A plaster that was bloodstained. She pulled away; he tightened his fingers, around her hand this time, so as not to hurt her.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked her.

Shit, shit, shit. This is what he did. He wormed his way in and dug out her secrets, one by one. He’d keep on going, if she let him, until there was nothing left for him to find, and that would be—

‘Lacey?’

‘It got infected,’ she said, looking him directly in the eye. ‘It’s a bit sore.’

‘That scar’s nearly five months old,’ he said. ‘No way did it get infected. Lacey, what did you do?’

It was none of his business. How dare he ferret his way into her head like this? Her mobile was ringing. No, her phone was still in the custody of the forensics service contracted to the Metropolitan Police. It was his phone. She watched him pull it out of his jacket pocket, check the screen, then put it to his ear.

‘Want me to come?’ he said after a moment.

He ended the call without saying anything more and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

‘You know another kid went missing tonight?’ he asked her.

Acutely conscious of the throbbing pain in her wrist and the sharp, twisting guilt in her chest, she nodded.

‘Apparently he’s now hanging by his ankles from Southwark Bridge.’

Both hands covered her mouth, pain forgotten. ‘Dead?’ she managed.

He shrugged. ‘Not clear yet, but probably.’

‘It doesn’t fit. He doesn’t kill them this quickly. And he doesn’t hang their bodies from bridges.’

‘If I ever meet him I’ll be sure to pass on your disappointment. In the meantime, the line-access team have been called out to bring him down.’

She nodded. One of the specialisms of the Marine Unit was searching at heights and the line-access team was a group of trained climbers. They regularly checked the bridges of London and other high-profile buildings for explosive devices. Joesbury was by the door now. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked her.

She shook her head.

A sigh, quick and impatient. ‘I’m a simple soul, but it strikes me it wouldn’t hurt you or Dana to remind yourselves you both work on the same team.’

‘She doesn’t need me.’

‘Have you considered that maybe I do?’

No, she could not be needed. Not by anyone and especially not by him. There was nothing in her to give. ‘I can’t.’

He dropped his eyes to her wrist again. The pain had become sharp and intense, like tears she couldn’t let herself cry.

‘Lacey, please sort yourself out,’ he told her. She braced herself for the slam of the door, but it closed softly and sadly and he was gone.

‘
CHRIST, IT’S LIKE
a fucking royal visit. Don’t these people sleep? Or are they all the ruddy undead?’

Dana and Mark, in oilskins and lifejackets, were on the flybridge of the police launch as, a little over the speed limit, it emerged from the shadow of Tower Bridge and motored upstream towards Southwark. Directly in front of them, the turquoise and gold bridge had been cleared of traffic and pedestrians, but every square foot of pavement on the southern embankment seemed to have someone standing on it. Windows of the buildings that lined the river were awash with faces.

In the forty-five minutes since Peter Sweep had posted on Facebook that Oliver Kennedy was dangling from Southwark Bridge, the news had spread round London like a contagious and particularly unpleasant rash.

‘It’s sodding mental,’ the chief press officer at New Scotland Yard had told Dana ten minutes earlier when she’d spoken to him on the phone. ‘I’ve counted three broadcast crews already and more will be on their way. Just do what you have to do and let us know when you have something to give us. We’ll try and keep the feeding frenzy off your back.’

Mark had a baseball cap pulled low over his face and a scarf tied high around his neck. He’d spent his career infiltrating criminal gangs. If his face became known, even appeared once on television,
that would come to a sharp end. He was risking a great deal, just by being here. In the cabin below, his uncle, Sergeant Fred Wilson, was at the helm and Neil Anderson and Susan Richmond were standing in frosty silence. As they neared the bridge, a tall man in uniform joined Dana and Mark on the flybridge. Chief Inspector David Cook was the officer in charge of the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Unit. He’d known Mark since he was a child.

‘The lad’s on a ledge about twenty feet above river level,’ he told them. ‘He’s in some sort of black bag, possibly a heavy-duty bin-liner. It’s difficult to see in the dark, but my lads have been under there already with binoculars and lights, so we know it’s there.’

‘What happened to dangling by the ankles?’ asked Mark.

‘Poetic licence on our friend’s part, thank God,’ said Dana.

‘There,’ said Cook as the boat reached the shadowed water beneath the bridge and slowed. ‘Count along four of those vertical iron struts, starting at the pillar. About twenty feet above the water.’

‘OK,’ said Mark.

‘Go directly up for about three feet, and you should just be able to make out a dark shadow. That’s it.’

The boat passed under the bridge and the three of them looked up. A dark, shapeless mass was all Dana could make out.

‘How the hell did he get it up there?’ asked Mark.

Once on the other side, Fred turned the launch towards the south bank. From overhead came the sound of a helicopter.

‘I hope to God that’s one of ours,’ said Cook, glancing up.

‘I didn’t call one,’ said Dana. ‘I think we can assume it’s not.’

‘Friggin’ circus,’ said Cook.

‘I think the question is, how did it get down there?’ Dana said to Mark. ‘David thinks it was swung on a rope and dropped from above. There might be something attached to the bag to help it snag, but basically it was touch and go whether it would catch on something or just go tumbling down into the water.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘The plan is to send a climber up to release it and lower it down to us,’ said Dana. ‘We’re just going to pick up and brief Spiderman, apparently.’

Mark did his one-eyebrow trick. ‘Who else?’ he said.

‘Spiderman’s the nickname of our best climber,’ said Cook. ‘Young officer, not been with us long. Bit of a loose cannon, just between us, but he got his name for a reason.’

‘He didn’t meet us at Wapping because no one ever knows what bed he’s going to be sleeping in,’ said Dana. ‘There’s a list of young women police officers and the team have to go through them systematically. It takes a while.’

‘He answered his mobile on the first call and he’s on his way,’ said Cook. ‘He’s a complete teetotaller so we never have to worry about calling him out. He’s the right man for the job, Dana. That’s a tricky climb, it’s dark and it’s wet. If the kid were definitely dead, we’d be taking much more time to prepare. Possibly even waiting till morning. If I send a less experienced climber up, there’s every chance he’ll slip.’

‘And you don’t want footage of one of your officers dangling in mid-air from Southwark Bridge while the world waits for us to bring down a child’s body,’ said Mark. ‘The man’s got a point, Tully.’

‘He’s arrived, Sir,’ Fred called from below. ‘He’s just kitting up.’

‘I’m rather curious to meet this bloke,’ said Mark. ‘Must get his autograph for Huck when it’s all over.’

When this was all over, they’d be transporting the body of a child exactly Huck’s age to the mortuary and she’d be on her way to tell his parents. Dana told herself to take it easy. Black humour was stock in trade for police officers. It was how they detached.